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The Great (American) Comic Book Debate - Kirkman vs Bendis

firehawk12

firehawk12

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I don't know if I missed this here, but I just found out about this Kirkman/Bendis scuffle/panel that I think raises a lot of good issues about the state of the American comic book industry today.

I haven't watched the panel yet, and while I understand Bendis' rebuttal, I still think what Kirkman said needed to be said and in fact, needs to be done.

Anyway, it all begins here:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=17705
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080814-WBKirkman.html

Bendis responds:
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080820-BendisWB.html
http://media.libsyn.com/media/wordballoon/WBkirkmanmission.mp3

And this is the Baltimore Comic-con panel:
http://ifanboy.com/content/video/iF...ian_Michael_Bendis__From_Baltimore_Comic-Con_

Anyone have any thoughts? I imagine that there are people who think Kirkman's full of shit. :lol:
 
Let me be sure here, he's saying Marvel and DC's big name talents should pitch their stories towards younger audiences and leave the more mature stuff to independents ?

Sorry, got to go with Bendis on this one.
 
He's saying that big names have the ability to make a living selling creator owned books even if their books will sell less than Spider-man #99545 or X-men #4313. He's saying that in order to keep the industry from dying because it's the same small group of people buying the same books (and the Diamond sell through list is evidence enough of this), you need creator owned works to try to expand the audience to people who don't even read comic books normally.

Bendis is saying that doing your own book is extremely risky and that Kirkman shouldn't try to make it sound as easy as it was for him - that Kirkman with Walking Dead and Invincible is an exception, not the rule. He uses his own indie experience as proof that it's difficult to make money not working on DC or Marvel books.

I agree with Kirkman if only because I think there should be more genres explored by the big two. DC is good with Vertigo and now Minx, but there may be more than can be done - hence Kirkman's push.
 
^Bendis also did Alias which was not a massive seller (though it certainly wasn't aimed at kids).

I think a mix would work. I unashamedly think Bendis is great and I found that out by reading New Avengers, not Alias. I'm more likely to read a book he writes because of that, even if it's not an established title. I went looking for other things he'd written and discovered Alias.
 
Yeah, that's Bendis' argument, that doing one will benefit the other.

Of course, I come from the other side of that fence and I found Bendis through his Image work and read Jinx, Torso, Fire, Powers, etc, before he made the jump to Marvel. Now I just see his Marvel work as a distraction from other interesting things that he just doesn't have the time to write because he's doing so many books.

I don't think Bendis is wrong... I just think Kirkman is "more" right. If you watch the panel, at one point he asks if there is anyone under 20 in the audience and there's just a handful of people. I think that's his greater point, that there isn't a new audience coming in to read comics now and he thinks that the "big name" people should go off on their own to try to build that new audience.
 
firehawk12 said:
I don't think Bendis is wrong... I just think Kirkman is "more" right. If you watch the panel, at one point he asks if there is anyone under 20 in the audience and there's just a handful of people. I think that's his greater point, that there isn't a new audience coming in to read comics now and he thinks that the "big name" people should go off on their own to try to build that new audience.
Click to expand...

Hmm. While I've always been aware of comics, I was (and still am, but that's not relevant) in my twenties when I first started purchasing graphic novels--say, maybe two years ago. Two reasons for this: one, the recent spate of comic books films got me interested in the print equivalent of the characters (there's an excellant gateway, incidently), and two, I finally had some disposable income of my own. Given the price of comic books, I'm not surprised to find that's it is a hobby that skewers to a more adult demographic these days; I certainly could never have afforded to keep up with more than one or two titles as a teen. And I don't think there's anything wrong with targeting that demographic; the 18 to 40-odd, and particularly males, are consider the prime demo for TV advertisers because they do have the cash and are willing to spend it. I don't have any numbers to back me up, but does the age group at places like Comic-Con really indicate that nobody new is coming in, or rather that new people are coming in at a later age?

As for corporate vs. independant, the first graphic novels I read were independant works like Maus, but I eventually got sick of the pretentiousness in this as in many other 'indie' fields (but not Maus, though - that rocked). The Marvel books (I've never really cared for mainstream DC other than Batman) fulfill their primary role of entertainment; if any are thought-provoking as well, that's gravy. And reading these titles, I get a feel for the writers whose work I enjoy, and then can go off looking at other work they've done outside of the major properties - now that I know they can tell a good story, which is often sadly lacking in the style-over-substance fashion of 'indie' books. As an aspiring writer myself, I would certainly encourage all and sundry to develop their own creations, to invest the time and effort into making something you really love; but at the same time, I would advise them not to quit their day-jobs with the big-name companies, because for every successful independant run, their are dozens of failures that vanish into obscurity or never manage to get off the ground in the first place. Try, but don't depend on it.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
 
I don't think you and Kirkman are talking about the same types of indie books, though. He does Invincible, The Astounding Wolf-Man and The Walking Dead.

They're not really all that pretentious.
 
Indie doesn't necessarily have to be "pretentious". Things like Scott Pilgrim draw in an audience that just isn't interested in guys in tights and that book is as far from Maus as you can get. And that's the point, having a broad spectrum of work that can appeal to all people... just like how there are people who only watch films by foreign directors because they think they're smarter than everyone else. :lol:

I think the point about reaching kids is just creating some kind of stepping stone to the medium as a whole. Think about all the kids who have read Harry Potter who now want to read more books now that the series is over. It's the same with everything - the earlier you can get to an audience, the more likely they are to at least want to continue exploring the medium as they mature.

Hell, think about all the nostalgia crap that we're going through now. Do you really think there'd be a Transformers movie franchise if it wasn't for the fact that everyone in their 20s-30s grew up watching the cartoon? Yeah, that's really long tail, but building in that childhood audience who wants to watch robots turn into cars has basically lead to a hundred million dollar franchise.

In the same way, Pokemon basically expanded the audience for three different media - anime, CCGs and video games. Even if a kid who went through the Pokemon craze doesn't do anything in those media anymore, it's at least something that's in their mind and that they might potentially go back to later on.

Just look at the Japanese market, where manga is treated just like any other form of entertainment. Someone can grow up reading kids manga then move on to more adult manga as they mature, to the point where you'll see adults read them on trains or whatever in the same way that you see people read novels over here. It's just acculturation.
 
firehawk12 said:
If you watch the panel, at one point he asks if there is anyone under 20 in the audience and there's just a handful of people.
Click to expand...
A panel at a convention is more likely to reflect people who have been fans for a good while and have some financial security, I'd imagine.

Comics have a niche audience that has a fairly stable number, growing for most of the last decade (I'm one of those who started reading recently), but they could do with more visibility; though the solution there is moreso the need for more visible distribution, to my mind.

Regarding Kirkman's idea about the big names, most of them do have at least one creator-owned project on the go, with some exceptions (Geoff Johns, for example).

Warren Ellis, who was and is a strong advocate of creator-owned stuff (he always has about a billion projects on the go), wrote that he had given up on work-for-hire, but did a fill-in on Ultimate Fantastic Four because Mark Millar asked him to do him a favour; and, to his surprise, in the months after that story he saw that sales of his creator-owned stuff started to go up, since new readers who had arrived in the last few years had seen his superhero work and then followed him back to the other projects he had been doing. Now he always has at least one Marvel project on the go, to keep his name in circulation.
 
It's funny, because in the panel Kirkman used single issue sales data to show that for both Bendis and his own work, the launch of Marvel comics with their names on them had little to no effect on the sales of their independent work. So I guess it depends.
Of course, there's also the point that having people who read Marvel go on to read other stuff doesn't expand the audience - it just shifts the audience around.

His larger point is that people like Bendis should just go off and do their own work and leave Marvel/DC completely because these are the people who can carry their own books now - similar to the original "exodus" of talent to form Image comics.
 
Yes, but what audience is he going to attract other than those already familiar with his Marvel work, which is what made him a big name?

And it certainly does have an impact; no way would Ed Brubaker's Criminal be selling as well as it does if people like me didn't know him from Captain America.
 
Well, I guess it depends on mindset. I found Bendis and Rucka and Brubaker and McKeever and Winnick long before they became Marvel/DC employees. And I saw each of them basically give up their own work to write superhero books.

You also have people like Marjane Satrapi who can do a work that's critically acclaimed and spawn a film adaptation. She's doing just fine reaching an audience that Marvel/DC will never reach and is perhaps more "famous" when you consider her in the broader audience of book readers.
 
Comics are basically for older audiences. Successful comics only sell 100k issues, the younger audiences are tiny. It's basically by nerds for nerds.

the format doesn't help.
 
Well, I would say that things like Owly and Mouse Guard appeal to younger readers.
And, of course, there's manga which basically sucks in a lot of the younger female audience (and it's why DC launched the Minx line of books and Marvel has tried things like Runaways and Spider-man Loves Mary Jane).
 
Minx failed.;)

I don't have a problem with them doing non-Marvel/DC stuff (which pretty much all of them are, as I said), but the broad success of the comics industry depends on superhero comics, and always has.
 
I'm holding three new Minx TPBs that just came out in my hands, so, I think it's doing just fine.

And, I guess this is the larger debate, but a slowly declining and aging audience isn't really a lot to go on. And quite honestly, I don't care if Marvel/DC basically look at the comics as an excuse to make new IPs for movie franchises. Go ahead and make Iron Man 5 and Batman 12. I just think it hurts the medium in America, which is unfortunate.
 
Wow, that was fast. I'm glad I got my copy of Plain Janes 2 before they disappear into the ether.

This is a fun quote though:
Multiple sources close to the situation agree Bond and DC aren’t to blame for MINX’s cancellation, and that this development should be seen as a depressing indication that a market for alternative young adult comics does not exist in the capacity to support an initiative of this kind, if at all.
Click to expand...

Those readers do exist, as evidenced by huge manga sales. I'm just sad that they've abandoned their attempt after only 10 books.
 
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